Eastleach

Bridge, Inn and Table

Keble's Bridge is the thing most people come to see first: a low limestone clapper bridge of five bays, its rubble piers carrying flat stone slabs. It links the two halves of Eastleach across the narrow River Leach, and in spring daffodils run along the banks on either approach. You can stand in the middle and see a church tower on each side, the two churches just a short walk apart.

The village pub is the Victoria Inn, which overlooks the houses and has been serving in some form since 1856. Tom and Maya Gabbitas have run it since 2016. The building started as an early-eighteenth-century private house with a coach house before it became an inn, and a south-facing stone dining terrace was added out front. Muddy boots and dogs were part of the arrangement.

The kitchen leans Mediterranean in places without abandoning the country pub: Siciliana olives, sourdough with herb butter, turlu turlu with a yoghurt dressing, and a pear-and-almond tart with vanilla ice cream. There are separate menus for Sunday lunch and steak nights, and one for children.

The Publican and the Farm

Tom Gabbitas has described the place as "a good old-fashioned boozer with good food to boot," which is about right.

Some of what reaches the table comes from just up the hill. Eastleach Downs Organic Farm is a 320-acre organic pig and arable holding run by Helen and Sam Wade, first-generation farmers who try to grow as much of their pigs' feed as they can on the land. There is an on-farm butchery selling their pork, bacon and sausages, and the Victoria takes pork from them.

Wildflower Walks and Twin Churches

The farm also runs a visitor hub with parking, indoor seating and an accessible toilet, and one of the better walks in the area starts here: a four-mile figure-of-eight through organic wildflower meadows, roughly two and a half hours on unsurfaced paths, with a north loop across fields and a copse and a south loop opening onto wider views. The route is rated for all-terrain mobility scooters, which is unusual for ground like this. A gentler option is the 4.25-mile Tale of Two Churches circular, which follows the meandering Leach from the bridge between the two churches. For families there is a village hall with a stage and kitchen, and behind it a green with a playground looking down the valley.

The two churches are the reason Eastleach exists twice over. The parish joins the old settlements of Eastleach Martin and Eastleach Turville, which face one another across the river. St Andrew, on the Turville side, is a twelfth-century Grade I church with a chevroned south doorway and a carved tympanum of Christ in Majesty flanked by two angels; inside are a Jacobean-panelled pulpit and a vine-carved lectern said to have come from Tewkesbury Abbey.

Norman Church and Domesday Eastleach

St Michael and St Martin, on the Martin side, is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust and open daily. It has tiny thirteenth-century stone heads in its windows, a fifteenth-century octagonal font, and a lectern assembled from Elizabethan table legs and bedposts. It has no electricity, running water or toilets. Richard Fitzpons founded it under the Normans, and his son gave it to Great Malvern Priory around 1120. A young curate named John Keble, later of the Oxford Movement, served both churches and is said to have started a Sunday school here.

When the Domesday surveyors came through, they counted the two Eastleaches separately: Martin the larger with two mills, each valued at ten shillings, and Turville a smaller holding worth six pounds.

Country-Lane Arrivals and Frolics Day

Eastleach sits four miles north of Lechlade, reached from the A361 or A417 and then country lanes. The nearest stations are a fair distance off, at Shipton and Swindon, and the bookable Robin demand-responsive bus has two stops at the Victoria Inn.

The pub is also the centre of Frolics Day, a village tradition remembered for at least a century, which ends with a tug-of-war fought across the River Leach.